Learn how the E-N crime team does their jobs and read about the quirky characters they encounter and the sometimes bizarre things that can happen at a crime scene that don't make it into their stories.

Michelle Mondo: Wanting to help

Beverly Atkinson stood outside the Emergency Operations Center at Brooks City-Base wanting to know what she could do to help.

She felt for the evacuees, she said, after living through her own harrowing experience in Biloxi, Mississippi when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Her house was destroyed by a fallen 100-year-old pine from her neighbor’s yard. She and her disabled daughter moved to three different locations trying to avoid the rising water. After the storm they hitchhiked with 7 others out of the city until someone picked them up. They rode to Mobile, Alabama where they were helped by friends from Florida.

And while the evacuation effort appears much more organized for Gustav, the storm brings back memories.

“I was watching the news at 2 a.m., and I really feel for these people,” she said. “I thought I’d come down here (to the EOC) to see if they needed me to do anything.”

Atkinson manages a restaurant on the base and wanted to see if they needed her services to help with food. The EOC has someone catering, she learned, but as a civilian working with the Air Force nearby she felt she had to ask.

In the aftermath of Katrina, Atkinson traveled to Great Falls, Montana where she found herself out of money and without a job. A bank gave her a $6,000 loan to buy a mobile home. She took it back to Biloxi where after a couple of months a doctor told her to leave. It was too polluted, she said.

San Antonio has been good to her. She likes her job and at 60 plans to retire in about five years.